JOHN 4:8-26 The Woman at the Well Part 2

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1 MP3 itunes XML Metro Calvary Roseville CA Richard Cimino January 3, 2010 JOHN 4:8-26 The Woman at the Well Part 2 Related Topics: The Humanity of Jesus; Samaria; Jacob s Well; Jews and Samaritans; Jesus Crossing Lines; Jesus Building Bridges Into Heart; Jesus Loving ; Conviction of Sin; Living Water; God Seeking Worshippers; Genuine Worship; Worship in Spirit; Worship In Truth; God Kissing Man; Man Turning to Kiss God; Jesus Reveals Himself as Messiah. REVIEW 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. We learned last week that the journey from Judea to Galilee through Samaria was 2-3 days. To travel around Samaria meant a journey of 4-6 days. We also learned that there was over 400 years of animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans. As a result of the hatred between Jews and Samaritans animosity a Jew needed to go around Samaria not through it. It meant that a 2-3 day journey turned into a 4-6 day journey. KJV Must needs go through Samaria. Jesus needed to travel through Samaria. NOT to save time and distance. Jesus NEEDED to go through Samaria to save ONE WOMAN! 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. The Eternal God became fully man. We see the unsearchable depth of His condescension in becoming man! QUOTE: John Ross Macduff Be it yours to rejoice in the glorious combination: that He who orders the magnificent marchings of Pleiades and Orion, who guides Arcturus took into union with the might and majesty of deity, the lowliness and the weakness of suffering humanity. 1

2 7 There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) We see the reason why God became a man and as a man needed to go through Samaria and in so doing bring Himself to the point of physical exhaustion It was to have a conversation with the lowest and the loneliest of the outcasts and rejects in Israel. Life wanted to confront death! QUOTE: Barclay Here was the Son of God, tired and weary and thirsty Here was Jesus breaking through the barriers of nationality and orthodox Jewish custom. Here is.. God so loving the world, not in theory, but in action. 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) That s John s commentary for his Greek audience. She is amazed that Jesus initiated the conversation. We don t want to miss that! Jesus is the initiator! Think about this If this woman had at this moment no thoughts of God God had been thinking of her. He sent His Son into this world to lay down His life as the wrath appeasing sacrifice for our sins and along the way initiate a conversation with this one woman, who no Jew or even Samaritan would give the time of day. Jesus not only initiated the conversation, but when He spoke He did not begin by blasting her for her sins! We know that He knew every one of them because John closed the 2 nd chapter by telling us that Jesus.. knew all men (John 2:24). Instead Jesus builds a bridge to this woman by asking a favor of her "Give Me a drink." He made a connection with her by addressing the subject of water. He spoke to her about something that was obviously uppermost in her mind as she had come to the well to draw water. As simple as His request might seem, it opened a door to a spiritual conversation. It built a bridge across a gulf that stood between Him and this woman. This simple bridge led to her conversion. This is how Jesus has dealt with anyone who knows Him today. Not only did Jesus initiate our relationship with Him, but He was also able to build a bridge to our hearts. He was able to find that special way to speak to our hearts of spiritual things, eternal things. He might have built that bridge by peaking your curiosity, or he may have built it by means of some heart-breaking circumstance. QUOTE: John Ross Macduff Each one of us must come, at some time or other, to have a personal dealing with Christ. It may be. When to use the suggestive simile of this 2

3 narrative, the pitcher is drained and emptied, and we are summoned away from our Shechem homes and broken cisterns to seek supplies of some better living water. We can learn from Jesus and His dealings with this woman that we can and we should build bridges to the unbelieving world around us. We can begin to interact with the lost without condemning them. We can find practical ways to connect with people by merely being observant. We can initiate conversations. 10 Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, I wonder if she for a moment thought Great, here s another guy who thinks he s God s gift to the world! I ve been married to five of them already. THE GIFT OF GOD QUOTE: John Ross Macduff Noontide At Sychar page IF YOU KNEW THE GIFT OF GOD How many times has the GIFT OF GOD stared us in the face and we missed Him? In hindsight I think the Lord came to me in the most mundane and common exercises of life before I gave my heart to Him. How many times before you and I were saved was there some voice, some prodding in the most common experiences of life and we couldn t help but think Is that really you, God? Was that was you yesterday / this morning? you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. HUGE Jesus begins by talking about water in a well as the remedy for her very real thirst in the midday heat. If you ve ever been really completely parched on a hot day you day dream about having that thirst quenched. (Me in H.S. Football wind sprints at end of a torturous practice waiting for the next whistle to blow I would imagine myself in my swimming pool, only it was ice cold and filled with fresh water and was drinking it empty!) Imagine that kind of thirst and then you get a cool glass of water. Jesus moves from the physical need and preoccupation to the spiritual and eternal. He spoke of it in the term LIVING WATER. Throughout the Old Testament, this is a metaphor for salvation and relationship with God. (Ps 36:9) (Ps 42:1) (Isa 12:3) (Isa 44:3) (Isa 55:1) (Jer 2:13) (Jer 17:13) (Eze 47:1-12) (Zech 13:1) In the human heart there is a thirst a nameless, unsatisfied longing; this vague discontent; this sense of lacking; this frustration. Augustine talks about "our hearts being restless till they find rest in thee." We are never safe from the longing for eternity which 3

4 God has put in man's soul. The problem is that we try to satisfy that thirst with stuff other than relationship with God. Wealth, possession, pleasures, fame might be streams but they are not living streams! They dwindle, they evaporate. According to the law of hydrostatics (the branch of mechanics concerned with the properties of liquids) water never rises above it s own level. In the same way the best of earthly joys and pleasures can rise no higher than earth. They begin and terminate here. But the living water found in Jesus springs from heaven and elevates us to heaven. They will never cease in our hearts until they are exhausted at their source. Since they have their origin in God they can never be exhausted. God said by the prophet Jeremiah They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters and have carved out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can t hold water. There is a thirst that only Jesus Christ can satisfy. Jesus is telling this woman that HE can answer the deepest thirst and yearning of her soul! Example: Colt McCoy after National Championship game. Injured in their first possession Texas went on to lose to Alabama. When asked how disappointing it was for him he said I have a passion for this game. I would have given anything to get back on the field. But I want to give glory to God. No matter what happens I want to give God glory. I know that no matter what happens my life is built upon the Rock! 11 The woman said to him, Sir, INTERESTING She starts by calling Him a Jew! But her respect is starting to increase. Now she calls him sir. you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Jacob s Well was between feet. Where do you get that living water? What are you talking about? Where are you going to get this water? We have a 200 ft. well and you don t even have a bucket. What are you talking about? Now, he s got her interest peaked. 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. It is quite possible that this could have been a 1-2 hour conversation that Jesus had with her, and that what we have here is the Cliff Notes version. REMEMBER The Disciples weren t there. When they finally return they see Jesus speaking with the 4

5 woman. Someone asked Who was that, what did you guys talk about? This ends up the summary of the conversation. Jesus is going to let her know that He IS greater than Jacob He s going to let her know that HE alone can answer the true thirst of her soul! So Jesus answered 13 Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water (this water pulled out of Jacob s well) will be thirsty again, And the same is true of ANYTHING temporal thing that we try to satisfy our spiritual thirst with it leaves us thirsty. 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. 15 The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water. Imagine how terrible it was for this woman to go through that painful experience every day. Every day, she gets up and she can t go to the well to be with the other women because she has no friends. She has to wait until the heat of the afternoon when there was no one else there. EVERY DAY is a painful reminder of how she was an outcast. She would throw her bucket on her back make the one and a half mile journey outside of her city, in the heat of the noon day heat and every step of the way she is constantly reminded that no one cares about her, that she is alone that she no friends. There is no one who is willing to journey with her, speak to her, comfort her. If she died along the way there would be no one there to pick her up. She does this every day. She draws her water by herself and then she walks home by herself; to give that water to a man that does not even love her enough to enter into a covenant wither just uses her for her body. She says - if you have some way that I do not have to do this anymore, tell me what do I need to do, how do I get this water? THIS IS AMAZING! 16 Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband, and come here. Jesus confronts her idolatry her sin. He confronts her point of greatest darkness. He doesn t do it arrogantly he doesn t do it in a way that is mean, vindictive, spiteful or injurious. He does it in a way that is loving 5

6 QUOTE: J.C. Ryle Those heart-searching words, "Go, call your husband," appear to have pierced her conscience like an arrow. From that moment, however ignorant, she speaks like an earnest, sincere inquirer after truth. And the reason is evident. She felt that her spiritual disease was discovered. For the first time in her life she saw herself. QUOTE: William Barclay There are two revelations in Christianity: the revelation of God and the revelation of ourselves. No man ever really sees himself until he sees himself in the presence of Christ; and then he is appalled at the sight. There is another way of putting it--christianity begins with a sense of sin. It begins with the sudden realization that life as we are living it will not do. We awake to (who we really are) and we awake to our need of God. With that simple request Jesus unmasks her as a woman who worships men. It is NOT a coincidence that this conversation is going to shift to the subject of WORSHIP. Worship is giving yourself, your time, your money, energy, love, affection, commitment, devotion. What do you care about? What do you sacrifice for? What is that that gets you out of bed in the morning? What is the master passion of your life? Is it power, money, sex, prestige, degree, a car, house, wife and kids? Your object of worship can be almost anything. And this woman worships men. Jesus confronts her greatest pain Because this was the well that she kept going to in hopes of satisfying the great longing of her soul. He says - okay, we will conclude this discussion, go get your husband, bring him back, we ll sit down and then we ll finish this conversation. 17 The woman answered him, I have no husband. Her response is a partial confession. Did you know that we are such sinners that we have sinful responses to sin? One sinful response to sin is partial confession. Okay, you got me. But to retain some semblance of dignity we only give up as much as we think necessary to stop the probing. Jesus said to her, You are right in saying, I have no husband ; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true. You had five and now there is some guy acting like your husband. Every day you are carrying water for a man who doesn t even love you enough to give you a ring in his last name. HUGE IDEA Jesus wanted her and wants you and me to get to the heart of the matter and quit fooling around with all your partial confessions. 6

7 This woman threw herself into relationships in hopes that there will be love here. Maybe there will be commitment. Maybe there will be longevity. We do not know what her motives her. BUT We do know that a series of men have taken advantage of her. We do know that she allowed herself to be taken advantage of. How TRAGIC that this woman has one person left in any sort of relationship with her and he just uses her for sex. Every morning she gets up and in the heat if the day carries the bucket to Jacob s well and carries it back all by herself to take care of some guy that does not even love her. We can look at her and say she is a sinful woman she is but she is also a lost and hurting woman that has not experienced love and grace and covenant. So here God comes and sits with her and talks to her. I can t help but think that BOTH of them have tears in their eyes at this point. In Verse 19 she responds 19 The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. One guy made this remark A prophet points out to a man or a nation what is wrong; but he does so not to push them into despair but to point the way to cure and reconciliation with God. Throughout the Books of Kings and Chronicles God had sent many prophets to Samaria to confront the idolatry in Samaria. Now God Himself has come to Samaria to personally address the idolatry in this one woman s life. So Jesus has gone from Jew to Sir to prophet in the eyes of this woman! 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. At first glance it seems like she s trying to change subjects maybe deflect the issue of her sin by talking about the theological differences between the Samaritans and the Jews. BUT that is not the case at all! It is an awesome question, it is a beautiful question. She is not arguing about the respective merits of the Temple on Mount Gerizim and the Temple on Mount Zion. All she wants to know is Where can I find God? Where do I go to find God and deal with my sin. NOTE THIS WITH ME Here is a woman who is spiritual spiritually ignorant and sexually wrecked. Welcome to She pretty much fits the description of our generation. She is not an atheist. She is a spiritual person. She is ignorant on the ultimate issues of relationship with God where do I worship, how do I meet God. About 10 years ago MTV did massive demographic research on young people in this country. They claimed their research was the most in-depth study ever undertaken in the history of the world. 7

8 The woman overseeing it said that their study showed that this is the most spiritual generation in the history of our nation. In the 1950s, 80-85% of people surveyed claimed to believe in God now it is about 98 or 99%. She said that number is staggering because they can t even find 98-99% of people that brush their teeth. So that is a big percentage. When asked what those people believed she said They believe everything! They have no unifying convictions. They believe in prayer, God, and life after death. But they don t know who God is. She says some are into organized religion, but most are not. Some are one big eclectic bag of spiritual beliefs Wow! Sounds just like the Samaritans! We live in an age that is highly spiritual but lost highly spiritual but totally in the dark about who God is and what He has done for us in Jesus. As a result there is tremendous sexual promiscuity. Because if you have not experienced a relationship with the One, true and living God if you don t know what it is to be loved by Him you are going to try to find that love in someone or something else and make that your idol. So God becomes a man as a man He NEEDS to go through Samaria. Physically exhausts Himself in getting there so that He could speak to this woman and addresses these issues. You are spiritual, but you re lost and you are sinful. She says Where do I go to find life. What do I do? Jesus declared 21 Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. Jesus looks at this woman and says you will worship the father. I love the fact that Jesus looks this woman and makes this promise You will worship God as your father. He says you won t worship Him in Jerusalem or on Mt. Gerizim. He says You Samaritan s worship what you do not know. In our age this is a very painful thing to say to people. You do not know what you are talking about. I know you pray but you don t know whom you are praying to. I know you do good works. But you don t know who you working for. EXAMPLE: St. Jude s commercial at the movies. AT the end of the commercial Jennifer Aniston says If your children are healthy, Give thanks! Then Robin Williams says, Give thanks. Then Antonio Bandellros says, Give thanks. The first time I ever saw it I turned to Valerie and said TO whom? DO they even stop to ask that the very statement Give thanks implies there must be some one to thank for that which is beyond human control? 8

9 I have never been an atheist. I ve told you a number of times that I was raised in a religious home educated in parochial schools. But for the first 22 years of my life I was ignorant. I believed there was a God I would pray ignorantly. This woman is not stupid but she is ignorant. we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. NOTE WELL: FROM the Jews not just FOR the Jews. From Abraham forward, God s intention was that through the Jewish people would come the savior of the world promised in Genesis 3. Yes, He would be the Messiah and King of Israel but God told Abraham that all nations of the earth would be blessed by this man who would come forth from the descendants of Abraham. The orthodox Jew was myopic concerning their Messiah. Even the first Christians, who were Jewish, didn t get it. Peter was stunned when the Holy Spirit fell on the first Gentile believers in Acts But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. FIRST Worship begins with God SEEKING man! It does not begin with you being spiritual and you finding God. NEWS FLASH! God is not lost. GOd is not sitting in heaven saying I hope someone finds me and pulls me out of the woods because my compass is broken and I can t find my way home. God is fine it is you and I that are lost. God SEEKS us! God finds us! We see this in the Old Testament pictured in Abraham sending his servant to find a bride for his son, Isaac. We see it in the New Testament with Jesus speaking about the shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the 1 lost sheep. I want to challenge you to take time this afternoon, and through the course of this week, to ask God to show you how He has been pursuing you following you protecting you trying to get your attention all because He loves you. Some of you might remember how there was a time that your life could have taken a very wrong turn but God intervened maybe even preserved your life and sanity. Some of you will see how even in the most painful time of your life, in your greatest disappointment God was preparing you, wooing you, courting you, graciously directing you to Jacob s well, so-to-speak. God is seeking worshipers! It is incredible! If this morning you are asking Is it even conceivable that God who orders the entire universe would know that I exist where I live what I m doing and would actually take His time to pursue me get to know me and find me? 9

10 The answer is YES! That is exactly what is recorded for us in John 4. God has come down from heaven takes on a human body lives for 30 years breaks every culture and religious barrier to get to this Samaritan women. And He sits down with her and takes the time to have this amazing conversation with her when nobody else will even talk to her. WHY? Because God the Father is seeking her to be His daughter and a worshiper. And it is God s love and it is God s kindness and it is God s affection to that single woman that moved Him to send His Son to and devote so much of His time to one woman. SECOND We can ONLY worship God in spirit God is spirit. Man can only relate to God in the realm of the spirit. From our study of John 3 we remember that we learned that man is born physically alive but spiritually dead. The ONLY way we can ever worship God, who is spirit, is to be made alive to God by the power of the Holy Spirit regenerated born again. Eph. 2:1; 4-5 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved Col. 2: And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. THIRD We can ONLY worship God in truth. Conversion begins with obeying the truth of the Gospel. It begins with the truth about our sin and guilt before a Holy God and what He did for us in sending Jesus to remedy our hopeless condition. Once made alive to God We pour our lives out to Him and for Him based upon the truth about who is God and how much God loves and what is God accomplished for me and Christ. We worship God in light of the truth of Scripture. John 17:17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. Jesus has promised this woman that SHE WILL worship God. The ONLY way that could happen was for Jesus to die on the cross to deal with the sin that separated her from God. Had the Samaritan woman been the only woman ever born, Jesus would have died for her because Jesus loved her. Her sin demanded God s justice and deserved punishment. When Jesus hung on the cross all of her sin was placed upon Jesus. 2 Corinthians, 5: Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 10

11 Jesus loved her. Jesus died for her. Three days later as He promised and in accordance with the Scriptures He rose from the dead. He conquered sin and hell and death. He conquered Satan and demons and lies and darkness. Jesus conquered it all! Victoriously Jesus went back up in the heaven. Jesus had made a promise that after He returned to heaven He would send the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of truth (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13). The Holy Spirit tells us the truth about Jesus. He tells us the truth about sin and repentance. When we respond to the work of the Holy Spirit by believing with our hearts on the Lord Jesus the Holy Spirit takes up residence in these human bodies and regenerates us. He makes us alive to God. He gives us a new mind and a new heart a love for the Scriptures and a new desire to worship the God of the Bible who loved us and sent Jesus to die for us. You know, God is still doing that. God is still seeking worshipers. You are here this morning because God is still seeking worshipers. He has found some of you. He is still in the process of seeking others. The same thing Jesus did for this woman, he does for us. He takes time with us. He speaks the truth to us. He loves us. He dies for our sin. He rose from the grave for us. He gives us the Spirit so we can worship in spirit and truth. CLOSING Did you know that the word for worship in the Greek language means TO TURN TOWARDS TO KISS. Worship begins with God kissing us, if-you-would. We respond to His kiss! We TURN to kiss Him. I can tell you as a husband there is nothing better than kissing my wife and then having her kiss me back. As a father there is nothing better than kissing my children and have them kiss me back. This woman had been kissed by a lot of men but she had never been kissed by God. A lot of men said they loved her but they never loved her like God. A lot of men promised fidelity but they never delivered like God. WE ARE LOVED BY GOD. 25 The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things. 26 Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. Did you know that in John s Gospel Jesus tells only ONE person that he is the Messiah? It is this Samaritan woman. Next week we will see that she tells everybody AMAZINGLY God has stooped down from heaven and kissed us with the love and mercy and grace of Jesus. Our time together like this morning is part of our response to His kiss. We gather as a group of men and women to worship Him express our love and adoration of Him. As he speaks the truth to us through the Scriptures we kiss Him 11

12 back. We do that through giving through singing through praying through communion. We also do that by extending a hand of friendship to those in this room and outside of this room who feel like the Samaritan woman by loving them and sitting down with them and speaking the truth to them the way Jesus did with the woman of Samaria did with us. 12